Internet and security: Spam in the third quarter of 2012

Analysts of "Kaspersky Lab" continue to celebrate the observed throughout the year downward trend in the proportion of spam in the mass mailings. In the third quarter of 2012, the volume of spam traffic has decreased in comparison with the previous period by 2.8% to 71.5%. However, experts have recorded a significant increase in the number of malicious mailings - from 3% to 3.9% - and this increase can be called another trend of the year.

To some extent the decline in the share of spam in the third quarter is due to the traditional summer slowdown. But the tendency to reduce spamming is also linked to the fact that advertising messages are gradually fading out of the e-mail to other sites, banners, social media, coupon services, contextual advertising.

As for the geographical distribution of spam, for the first three months of the second half there were some changes. In the ranking of sources of spam in the third quarter significantly "increased" its U.S. position, so that all of North America and gained 27.05% in the list of spam regions took the second place. The first prize is traditionally left for Asia, which accounts for almost half of the world's spam (49.50%). Latin America was in third place with 7.34%, and the fourth by a small margin went to Western Europe (6.86%), which in the third quarter of 2012 was able to overtake the much spam activity to Eastern Europe (3.64%).